Boxing Wilhelmina

At the end of November, I was luckily enough to squeeze into one of The Observatory’s taxidermy classes. I ended up creating this lovely lady rat, Wilhelmina. I was expecting to be very squeamish about the whole thing – playing with dead things has always been a taboo when growing up, I avoided dissection in science classes during high school and the closest I’ve ever come to touching something’s guts has been removing a gizzard bag from a whole chicken. Sheltered from squicky things is a bit of an understatement. But I’ve always been interested in biology and taxidermy especially of late, so off I went with my partner in crimes, Numidas Prassarn, to class.

I couldn’t access my camera during the actual dissection since I didn’t want mouse gore on it, but the process of skinning her was actually incredibly clean, thanks to copious use of borax & some very delicate work with an xacto blade. The guts are all held together by a thin membrane, so if you don’t pierce it, everything is held together in a nice mouse-y sack. We broke the leg bones to keep the fingers & toes intact & to get the body bag out of our little friends. The skull stayed intact as well, though we had to clear out the brain. It is SO TINY that I didn’t even realize I’d cleaned it out. The eyes are tiny map pins that pierced the actual eyes & took their place. That part actually made me the queasiest, because I cannot stand the idea of needles going into eyeballs.

Wilhelmina now resides on my shelf. Her fingers lost a lot of their plumpness as she’s been drying out. I need to give her a good brushing as well. But I would love to do more classes like this & play with actual articulation and standing poses. It’s a fun combination of sculpture & animation as you stick armature wire into the arms & tail to recreate the skeleton & provide support. I adore it.

About

Glukkake is a NYC-based screenprinter, specializing in illustration and graphic design. Her work has been showcased all over the United States and one of her editions is featured in the New York Museum of Modern Art. She is also known as the creator of Narwhal BBQ Skewers, a Kickstarter-funded project that is now available in stores.